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Playing Elite Dangerous, a lot of these names are quite familiar. I have at one point held base at Wolf 359 at least :) Maps like these are so fascinating, any

by tyfon 7y ago

Playing Elite Dangerous, a lot of these names are quite familiar. I have at one point held base at Wolf 359 at least :) Maps like these are so fascinating, anyone know of something similar with updated planet information?

ptrincr 7y ago
I was thinking the same, but more so with Frontier: Elite II :-)
kangnkodos 7y ago
About 15 years ago, I used the open source program, Celestia. You could move around the solar system and beyond in 3D. It was cool at the time, but I haven't looked at it in a long time. It also allowed add-on data to be imported. Hobbyists would create accurate 3D models of weird shaped asteroids using the latest data from NASA, and you could download the data, and view it using the main Celestia program. Maybe someone has posted updated data in Celestia format somewhere?
- tyfon 7y ago
  That sounds really awesome and it seems the project is still alive [1]. I'm going to play with this after work tomorrow! [1] https://celestia.space/ https://celestia.space/
  - brylie 7y ago
    I'd like to explore Celestia with my son but can't find an installer for Ubuntu 19.10. Anyone know of a Flatpak or Snap installer for Celestia?
- karatestomp 7y ago
  You can script it in Lua. I once used that to make a presentation in it for my wife to use in class. Showed the Solar system from above, then visited Sol and each planet in turn, doing a split-screen with Earth and zooming whichever pane had the smaller body to compare sizes, that sort of thing. It was like having a scriptable Magic Schoolbus. Pretty cool.
wjdp 7y ago
I'm playing right now. Just docked at Morgan's Rock (on the edge of the Sagitarius arm heading back towards Sol) after a ~20kly loopy exploration/POI tourism trip. Nothing comes close to this game for gaining an understanding of the shape, distances and density (or lack thereof in some areas!) in the Milky Way (you've got an FSD/FTL drive but not a good enough one to leave the galaxy).
- tyfon 7y ago
  It makes you appreciate the distances between binary stars when it takes 30+ minutes to travel from one to the other at 1000C :) Anyone slightly interested in astronomy should take the game for a spin or just to open the galaxy map and zoom out.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    I remember arriving on such a system and being a little surprised that I could barely even see the companion star. It was just a much brighter star among all the others.
- Stevvo 7y ago
  Exploring the galaxy in Elite is incredible, but just like everything else in the game, it's so damn boring and repetitive. FSD charging, jump, cooldown/fuel scoop. Repeat 1000x.
gimboland 7y ago
As soon as I opened that page I had a flashback to playing Elite on my ZX Spectrum as a 10-year-old. I had to look twice at the map to check it didn't show Lave and Reidquat. And that's really weird, because now I look into it, I think there's no way I saw a map like this in that game. Nor Frontier on the Amiga, as far as I can see. But when I look at the map, Elite is all I can think about, somehow I feel certain that's where I've seen it before, even though the evidence suggests I'm wrong. There's some strong association going on there. Weeeeeeird. Edit: I think it might actually just be that I first saw this page so long ago that it feels the same... As soon as I zoomed out I knew I'd seen it before, but not for a long long time.
- jimmcslim 7y ago
  The colours and font are quite evocative of the early versions of Elite, even if the names of the stars aren't :-)
- prismatk 7y ago
  I think it's that the layout of the map, with flags going above and below a circular plane, looks exactly like (and is perhaps inspired by) the scanner that shows where ships around you in local space are in Elite/Oolite (FOSS Elite 1984 clone, highly recommended).
- samplatt 7y ago
  The Map Is Not the Territory. Your memory of the mental model of our local neighbors that you'd worked out is overriding the actual memories. Something similar happens when we remember childhood houses. Spaces where there was a lot of activity seem bigger, because we've mapped those areas extensively.
  - lscharen 7y ago
    Interesting. I’m aware of the common feeling that one’s childhood room seems “much smaller than I remembered” when it’s visited in adulthood (especially after a long time away), but I had never heard that feeling tied to level of time/activity done in that space. It makes a lot of sense in retrospect.
pmiller2 7y ago
Wolf 359 has a rather storied history in fiction. I would guess more people are probably familiar with the reference in Star Trek: The Next Generation than in the Elite games. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in_fiction#Wolf_359_(CN_Leonis) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in...
- TomMarius 7y ago
  I was surprised when I found out that it's a real place. I wonder what is the portion of made up and real places in Star Trek and other space opera
Anarch157a 7y ago
O7 Commander. I love Elite exactly because it lets me fly to those stars. Since we're still not at the point where we can go there in person, we can at least launch the game and dream about a future whete it's possible.
TheAdamist 7y ago
Same comment for me, but star control 2. If we can't travel there in real life, at least there is video game tourism.

by tyfon 7y ago

ptrincr 7y ago

I was thinking the same, but more so with Frontier: Elite II :-)

kangnkodos 7y ago

About 15 years ago, I used the open source program, Celestia. You could move around the solar system and beyond in 3D. It was cool at the time, but I haven't looked at it in a long time. It also allowed add-on data to be imported. Hobbyists would create accurate 3D models of weird shaped asteroids using the latest data from NASA, and you could download the data, and view it using the main Celestia program. Maybe someone has posted updated data in Celestia format somewhere?

tyfon 7y ago
That sounds really awesome and it seems the project is still alive [1]. I'm going to play with this after work tomorrow! [1] https://celestia.space/ https://celestia.space/
- brylie 7y ago
  I'd like to explore Celestia with my son but can't find an installer for Ubuntu 19.10. Anyone know of a Flatpak or Snap installer for Celestia?
karatestomp 7y ago
You can script it in Lua. I once used that to make a presentation in it for my wife to use in class. Showed the Solar system from above, then visited Sol and each planet in turn, doing a split-screen with Earth and zooming whichever pane had the smaller body to compare sizes, that sort of thing. It was like having a scriptable Magic Schoolbus. Pretty cool.

wjdp 7y ago

I'm playing right now. Just docked at Morgan's Rock (on the edge of the Sagitarius arm heading back towards Sol) after a ~20kly loopy exploration/POI tourism trip. Nothing comes close to this game for gaining an understanding of the shape, distances and density (or lack thereof in some areas!) in the Milky Way (you've got an FSD/FTL drive but not a good enough one to leave the galaxy).

tyfon 7y ago
It makes you appreciate the distances between binary stars when it takes 30+ minutes to travel from one to the other at 1000C :) Anyone slightly interested in astronomy should take the game for a spin or just to open the galaxy map and zoom out.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  I remember arriving on such a system and being a little surprised that I could barely even see the companion star. It was just a much brighter star among all the others.
Stevvo 7y ago
Exploring the galaxy in Elite is incredible, but just like everything else in the game, it's so damn boring and repetitive. FSD charging, jump, cooldown/fuel scoop. Repeat 1000x.

gimboland 7y ago

As soon as I opened that page I had a flashback to playing Elite on my ZX Spectrum as a 10-year-old. I had to look twice at the map to check it didn't show Lave and Reidquat. And that's really weird, because now I look into it, I think there's no way I saw a map like this in that game. Nor Frontier on the Amiga, as far as I can see. But when I look at the map, Elite is all I can think about, somehow I feel certain that's where I've seen it before, even though the evidence suggests I'm wrong. There's some strong association going on there. Weeeeeeird. Edit: I think it might actually just be that I first saw this page so long ago that it feels the same... As soon as I zoomed out I knew I'd seen it before, but not for a long long time.

jimmcslim 7y ago
The colours and font are quite evocative of the early versions of Elite, even if the names of the stars aren't :-)
prismatk 7y ago
I think it's that the layout of the map, with flags going above and below a circular plane, looks exactly like (and is perhaps inspired by) the scanner that shows where ships around you in local space are in Elite/Oolite (FOSS Elite 1984 clone, highly recommended).
samplatt 7y ago
The Map Is Not the Territory. Your memory of the mental model of our local neighbors that you'd worked out is overriding the actual memories. Something similar happens when we remember childhood houses. Spaces where there was a lot of activity seem bigger, because we've mapped those areas extensively.
- lscharen 7y ago
  Interesting. I’m aware of the common feeling that one’s childhood room seems “much smaller than I remembered” when it’s visited in adulthood (especially after a long time away), but I had never heard that feeling tied to level of time/activity done in that space. It makes a lot of sense in retrospect.

pmiller2 7y ago

Wolf 359 has a rather storied history in fiction. I would guess more people are probably familiar with the reference in Star Trek: The Next Generation than in the Elite games. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in_fiction#Wolf_359_(CN_Leonis) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars_and_planetary_systems_in...

TomMarius 7y ago
I was surprised when I found out that it's a real place. I wonder what is the portion of made up and real places in Star Trek and other space opera

Anarch157a 7y ago

O7 Commander. I love Elite exactly because it lets me fly to those stars. Since we're still not at the point where we can go there in person, we can at least launch the game and dream about a future whete it's possible.

TheAdamist 7y ago

Same comment for me, but star control 2. If we can't travel there in real life, at least there is video game tourism.